Obama to tout tangible health law benefits

After two weeks of sustained GOP assaults on his health care law, President Barack Obama tries to turn the page Thursday with a speech promoting Obamacare provisions the White House says are already saving people money.

Obama will highlight a relatively obscure part of the the health law that requires insurers to send rebates to customers if the insurance companies spend less than 80 percent of premium dollars on actual medical care. About 8.5 million people will share $500 million in rebates for violation of that requirement, the White House estimates.

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POLITICO Pro analysis: Obamacare

White House: Critics 'ignorant'

“There’s a lot that’s said and kicked around about the Affordable Care Act, but at [Thursday’s] event, the president will break down in very real terms what this policy means, in particular for 8.5 million Americans,” a senior administration official said on a background call Wednesday afternoon.

The White House is hoping to refocus the health care storyline after Republicans have spent the past two weeks depicting the administration’s delay of the employer as a clear sign of the law’s failure. But what you won’t hear from the president in his first health care speech since the delay was announced is an explanation of why the administration delayed the mandate. The White House says it’s already covered that, and the delay only affects a very small portion of the population.

Instead, the White House wants to show that despite all the noise, Obamacare is already providing tangible benefits to real people.

Obama will be joined on stage by individuals who’ve received insurance rebates and enrollment counselors who’ll help people sign up for Obamacare coverage in just a few months.

Obama’s speech will highlight another obscure Obamacare provision: a requirement that insurers face extra scrutiny for proposing double-digit rate increases. White House officials say the rate of those large premium hikes has dropped dramatically since Obamacare became law in 2010.

The administration will also release a report Thursday morning claiming that average health insurance premiums next year, when the health law takes full effect, will be about 18 percent lower in 11 states — including key battleground states like New Mexico and Virginia — than the CBO had predicted.

The report will come out a day after New York state announced insurance premiums there will drop by more than 50 percent next year – a result that the White House was eager to tout Wednesday, even as questions were raised about just how representative New York is of the entire federal health care law.

“At some point, I think even [critics] would have to say when you have these states playing out, you can’t call it a one-off anymore,” said a senior administration official, who pointed to favorable rates in California and Oregon. “You can’t call it an outlier anymore.”

It’s still unknown, however, what consumers could expect to pay in more than half the states where the feds are running health insurance exchanges. Those rates likely won’t come out until September, a few weeks before the exchanges are scheduled to open for enrollment.